A hospital-acquired infection (HAI), also known as a nosocomial infection, is an infection that is acquired in a hospital or other health care facilities. HAIs can be caused by bacteria, fungi, viruses, or other less common pathogens. These infections lead to the loss of tens of thousands of lives and cost the U.S. health care system billions of dollars each year. All hospitalized patients are susceptible to contracting a nosocomial infection. Some patients are at greater risk than others—young children, the elderly, and persons with compromised immune systems are more likely to get an infection. On any given day, about one in 25 hospital patients has at least one HAI.
The role of medical devices in the transmission of (HAIs) has long been recognize. With numerous studies demonstrating the transmission of pathogens from surface to patients and decades of medical literature chronicling stethoscope bacterial contamination rates to be consistently high (average of 85%), stethoscopes are considered to be a potentially significant vector for HAIs.
Although current standard of care guidelines recommends stethoscopes to be disinfected before and after each patient auscultation, it is generally recognized that most physicians and nurses do not disinfect their stethoscopes routinely. Survey and research data support this perception and reveal compliance to be less than 30%. Documented reasons for non-compliance include; current recommended practice is tedious and time consuming, supplies not available and/or not located within workflow, concerns about wear and tear on stethoscope, and lack of visual reminders. Addressing these issues is critical to developing an optimal solution that will be readily adopted by clinicians.
Disposable stethoscope covers provide a potential solution to protect against HAI. A stethoscope cover is a material that covers the surface of a stethoscope head, the portion of the stethoscope that comes into contact with the skin of a patient, and acts as a barrier to prevent the transfer of bacteria from the patient to the stethoscope, or vice versa. The disposables either cover or adhere to the stethoscope head for one-time use and may be discarded afterward. However, health care workers may still inadvertently forget to or purposefully avoid the hassle of using and/or replacing the stethoscope covers due to time constraints. Additionally, known storage devices for storing and dispensing disposable stethoscope covers all require manual activation, which may result in transmission of bacterial contamination from clinician's hands. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 7,117,971 to Cornacchia describes a stethoscope cover applicator for facilitating application of stethoscope covers. The applicator includes a base having a support surface, a cutting edge, and a spindle carrying a roll of a membrane for inhibiting contact between the stethoscope head and the patient during use. However, the applicator requires the health care worker to contact the stethoscope head with the membrane against the support surface, then manually unroll the spindle until the stethoscope and the attached membrane is past the cutting edge of the base, and subsequently apply pressure to tear the membrane via the cutting edge to separate the membrane attached to the stethoscope head and the rest of the membrane on the spindle.
U.S. Patent Application No. 2011/0186590 to Lee describes a stethoscope cover and carrier strip assembly and a stethoscope cover dispenser. The dispenser requires a medical professional to manually advance a cover from a rolled carrier strip into a staging area where the cover is stretched in both a longitudinal and a lateral direction to allow unencumbered insertion of the stethoscope head. U.S. Patent Application No. 2008/0257637 to Miller describes a dispensing apparatus that places a disposable stethoscope head cover in an attachment station for attachment to a stethoscope head. The dispensing apparatus requires a dispensing arm to move a disposable cover from a pre-staging shelf into the attachment station. The dispensing apparatus may also determine when there are no disposable covers left in the pre-staging shelf when the dispensing arm is in a home position.
It would therefore be desirable to provide a touch-free stethoscope dispenser that may automatically dispense disposable stethoscope covers for attachment to a stethoscope head.
It would further be desirable to provide a touch-free stethoscope dispenser that may automatically alert a health care worker when the supply of disposable stethoscope covers is low or empty.